Is it possible to hook up an Electric Guitar through my System ???

I don’t know if this is more appropriate here or in After Hours, but here goes.
I used to play Guitar back when I was a teenager in the 80’s.
I don’t have any of my equipment anymore, but I was wondering if I pick up a new Guitar could hook it into a spare input on my Lexicon DC-1 or would I need a dedicated AMP again.
Is there some type of adapter to convert the signal to what I would need?
It would be a shame to buy another AMP when I already have 9-Speakers and a rack of AMP’s in my room.
I tremble at the thought of what my best Angus Young impression would sound like with my twin SVS Subs.
Any ideas ???
Shawn S

Yes, I had the same idea last year and picked up a Digitech RP-7 preamp/effects board and hooked it up to the stereo inputs on a receiver. I wasted about $250 on this rig because hifi systems just can't sound like a guitar amp.
I was not happy with the tone until I bought a real guitar amp with vacuum tubes.
For $350 you can get a Peavey Classic 30 combo preamp/amp with 30 watts of fat, crunchy or bell-like tube tone.
You can overdrive the four EL-84 power tubes and the speaker will break-up to give you that Back in Black tone that you could never get on a $100,000 hifi system.
Rock On Shawn!

I would strongly recommend against it. The sounds you reference come from distortion, the exact opposite goal of an audio system. In regards to electric guitar, it is the overdriving of the signal and/or the innability of the amp to precisely drive the speaker that results in the sounds/tone we love. I would not recommend overdriving your audio gear or purposefully distorting your speakers.
I good guitar tube amp, which will play much louder than your audio system, can be had relatively cheap. And will sound much better than such a dangerous setup. Remember that raw sounds/signals have been compressed and such before being mastered and played back by you on your speakers.
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Well, it should be quite possible with a decent guitar preamp. I would reccommend looking into a dedicated preamp/processor. The Mesa (a.k.a. Meas/Boogie) Triaxis for example is a small, switchable multi channel single-rack space preamp that uses all tubes.
Often times recording artists will simply plug a preamp directly into the mixing board of a recording studio to lay down tracks. It will take you a bit of tweeking to get just the right tone, but it is obtainable. I have done it myself many times.
Why, waaay back in the day when I was just beginning my guitar playing I had an old Tom Scholz Rockman X-100 which I HAD to plug in to a Hi-Fi rig to get an amplified tone. Of course the Rockman was an old transistor based design, so great tube tone was unobtainable using it. But the newer tube based preamps are a different story entirely. Check out the Mesa model. Rocktron makes some tube preamps, and even Marshall. There are even some digital modeling amps like the ones from Line 6 or Peavy which do a pretty decent job of replicating the tube sound you are looking for. With a bit of Re-EQ'ing and a good preamp you can definately get good tone through a High Quality Hi-Fi rig these days. Is it the same exact tone as a live stack? No. But it can be very very close.
Another thing that I should mention ...the difference you will hear when playing something back in wide stereo is HUGE. Of course guitar is a monorial signal, but many preamps also have built in stereo 24Bit DSP engines to produce a variety of chorus, reverb, delay, and various other stereo effects which can really have a positive effect of your sound when properly implemented. To get a good stereo wide tone with big amps requires having a stereo power amplifier in addition to at the least a couple of 2*12" (2 drivers at 12" each) speaker cabnets, or a couple of 4*12" cabnets to go with the preamp. This can take up a great deal of space when you have them run to either side of the room to get good imaging, and you may not be able to spare that kind of space with your current living arrangements. When thinking 'small amp' in stereo ...forget it. Most combo amps which can run in stereo by themselves have two 12" drivers spaced about 3-4 inches apart at the most. To get decent stereo imaging from one of the combo amps, you would have to practically wear it strapped to your face. So actually, for you to get a really sweet and HUGE ...MONSTEROUS tone without eating up a huge amount of space with what could be termed as 'eyesore' speaker cabinets, and considering that you have twin SVS and a good audio set up ...the best solution for you may well be to look into a good preamp/processor to run through your Hi-Fi set up. I do this myself, and have played many different amps in many different environments and with many different speaker configs and effects ...yada yada etc... I know what guitar amps sound like. The preamp into the Hi-Fi Rig solution can sound just awesome when properly set up. You will like what you hear. As for the safety of your rig, remember that there can be a lot of extreme dynamics when playing distorted guitar tones, and you should start off with the bass at zero and then bring it up to calibrate to a safe level. Just be careful not to drive it too hard as with anything else, and you will be fine. It is no more a threat to your system than cranking up Titan AE. [Edited last by Sean Oneil on August 03, 2001 at 02:07 AM]

Or, even less expensive, is to go to the Rat Shack and buy an inexpensive dj mixer with a 1/4 inch microphone input. You can plug the guitar into that, (watch the volume), plug the line out to your system, and it should come through. I did that for a lot of years after I sold my Peavey Classic Tube Amp.
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Hi Shawn,
There's no reason why you couldn't use your HT system to monitor your guitar. As others have said, provided you have a decent guitar Pre/Pro and you take it easy on the "windmills", no harm will come to your system. Guitar players monitored and cut tracks in a similar fashion during my engineering days. They'd sit in the control room with their pre/pro of choice, guitar on their lap, Pre/pro into the console, console into the amps, amps to the monitors. It's done all the time. You just need to decide whether it would be more advantageous to have a Peavey that you can physically pick up and take with you somewhere or a nice pre/pro that sits on top of your stereo rack.
Have fun,
Greg

I don’t know about you guys, but I think there is just something inherently wrong with plugging ANYTHING from Radio Shack into a Lexicon.
I think the two would repel each other like trying to put the North & South poles from two magnets together.
Thanks for all the suggestions of equipment, I haven’t quite decided what to buy yet.
Shawn S